Discussion on:

Use Whitman and Jobs as your role models

Do you agree that passion can create greatness?

Anyone want to be a Soviet officer?
/sarcasm off

When you can no longer hold "all employees" in thrall to "leadership" -- come to think of it: who are those of Occupy Wall Street? -- then comes the day you are outed.

It is not the management style per say, but that great leaders have passion, belief in themselves, drive, sometimes unable to listen to others and vision. You can try to emulate all of them, but the last. This is only proven in retrospect. Jobs and I guess Whitman (don't know much about her) have vision. A person with all the other characteristic could just drive an enterprise into ruin. CEO's who belief your rhetoric could be fooling themselves. 90% of CEO's will never be people of vision. That is a rare trait. Most CEO's should be trying to make the Enterprise better. And try to recognize those with vision and use them.

I have a physics background, but trying to be like Einstein is a stupid thing to try. Maybe pick up some pointers, but I am not Einstein. And even Einstein was wrong about QM. So will Whitman succeed in her new Jobs? Not same as old so maybe her magic won't transfer. Different beast. Startup vs. Entrenched. Mercurial works in an exciting startup, not so much in a stable business.

Time will tell, if Whitman has the Royal Jelly to work in a different world. I'm betting not and she will blame her failure on underlings without vision. And Steve Jobs would have failed as leader of Microsoft and definitely IBM. Just because a tool works well hammering in nails does not mean it can be used for screws.